“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.

Leaving aside the security concerns, this story highlights a much more significant issue.

If we are to believe the likes of Ambrose Evans Pritchard, the Chinese Government has solemnly promised to drastically reduce its consumption of fossil fuels, albeit rather conveniently at some undetermined point in the future. Meanwhile, Mark Carney tells us that fossil fuel reserves will soon be stranded assets.

Yet on the ground the reality is utterly different. Far from pulling back from fossil fuels, China is actively increasing development, not just at home but around the world as well.

Chinese national oil companies (NOCs) are the new big players on the global energy scene. In the last three years, they spent a total of USD 73 billion in upstream investments and now operate in more than 40 countries to control about 7% of worldwide crude oil output, raising alarms in some quarters about supply security and price.

TAHOMA

According to the Mail:

China has become the biggest oil operator in the North Sea, with a state-owned company said to be in line for £2billion of tax breaks.

China National Offshore Corporation (CNOOC) runs two of the biggest oilfields in the area.

One of its subsidiaries, Nexen, is responsible for extracting around 200,000 barrels a day – more than 10% of the total.

CNOOC was blocked from buying a US oil company over national security concerns a decade ago.

But no concerns appear to have been raised in Britain when the company bought Nexen, a Canadian oil operator with a large stake in North Sea oil, in 2012.

Leaving aside the security concerns, this story highlights a much more significant issue.

If we are to believe the likes of Ambrose Evans Pritchard, the Chinese Government has solemnly promised to drastically reduce its consumption of fossil fuels, albeit rather conveniently at some undetermined point in the future. Meanwhile, Mark Carney tells us that fossil fuel reserves will soon be stranded assets.

Yet on the ground the reality is utterly different. Far from pulling back from fossil fuels, China is actively increasing development, not just at home but around the world as well.

Chinese national oil companies (NOCs) are the new big players on the global energy scene. In the last three years, they spent a total of USD 73 billion in upstream investments and now operate in more than 40 countries to control about 7% of worldwide crude oil output, raising alarms in some quarters about supply security and price.

Trebuchet is a “serif” font meaning it has horizontal elements on the ends of the characters and is used by typesetters for bodies of text as the horizontal elements supposedly help ones eyes track along while reading.

A san-serif font like Tahoma, is for headlines, labels and the like. Or so I have heard.

Not much in it. I have some sight difficulties so would probably notice any marked difference. Both are sans serif and have the closed ‘a’, making both easier to read. I notice when in italics, which you use quite a lot, Trebuchet has more open O’ and zeros so, on that basis, I would prefer you to keep Trebuchet.

Just done a font search and it does indeed appear to be Corzinair, a serif font and not sans serif Trebuchet. I agree with the consensus. Paul is doing the world a great service. Trebuchet – Corzinair is fine. Leave it as it is!

Both fonts are Sans Serif so I don’t understand Gregole’s comment. They are both fine by me. But to be honest I do prefer a Serifed font, like good old Times Roman and all that lot, but it is no big deal.

What is a big deal is the continued selling of key British assets to foreign companies and nations, especially potentially hostile ones. It has to stop, we must keep the family silver for the kids.

Agreed. Where the idea has come from that that font is Trebuchet I can’t imagine. Trebuchet is a sans-serif face created a few years ago for Microsoft. What that looks like to me is a version of our old friend TNR but whatever it is it is likely to be an easier read long-term than Tahoma. Serif faces generally are.

The only problem I have is with the size but that can be corrected by the user.

Either way it’s the content that matters and I’ve not seen any complaints about that.

The content is far more important than choosing between two very similar fonts so personally I couldn’t care less which one you choose Paul. Presumably the suggestion has come from the Titanic deckchair arrangements committee! Keep up the good work. Grumps.

Stay with the old.
There have been numerous tests showing the serifs aid legibility. They have found many read by looking at the shape of a word, rather than the letters within it (that is why vowels can be left out and it is still understandable) and the serifs aid the mind to create a shape box. That is why almost all serious newspapers, textbooks and novels have stayed with the serif font. As Gregole noted, san-serif is for headlines where there aren’t too many words. Unless, of course, you intend to turn your posts into clickbait like many of the alarmist ones;-)

Keep up the good work for me I can’t see a definitive difference besides that, much software will change it anyway. My email client Thunderbird as far as I can tell is changing it to Arial or Cambria depending on the Serif. If I cut and pasted into Word it becomes Helvetica.

Stick with what you’ve got it is in broken tell your advice that they are misguided and that such questions are not valid in this environment.

– Yes of course Paul I see you are already using a sans font : Trebuchet
It was my mistake to think it it was Times New Roman.
These comments boxes are fine to read, cos of the grey background
But I have having real problems scanning the main body text especially when it’s italic.
Whereas on sites like BBCnews, Bishop-Hill or biasedbbc.org I can easily scan the page very quickly, cos they look so clear. (I am quite a small screen) The last 2 do use a grey background behind the font and that makes the font extra clear.

Tahoma is hopeless with words that comprise consecutive vertical strokes such as “like” and “pulling”, which are bunched together making it harder to read. Stick to Trebouchet. I am more concerned about the font you use for your blog text, which is pretty awful (I mean the font not the text!)

I’m in the same quandary. I generally write on my Apple computer, but the Supreme Court requires documents all be presented in a New Century Schoolbook font, on Their 6×9 format, so the forty volumes can be lined up neatly on the shelf. I have a Microsoft computer also, with a variety of operating systems, and some of them speak New Century. They are just so slow, it makes me feel like I am setting linotype with hot lead, which is fun, but redrafts are ridiculous, especially if I chAnge Page 1 like add or subtract an interested party for recusals. It’s just crude, curious, and essentially just refractory. I know they have Apples. I use Georgia. It has descenders. KEEP WRITING! YOU’RE DOING GOOD!!!!

Without reading all of the comments, my comments are:
(1.) Fonts with serifs such as Times New Roman are more readable than ones with out.
(2.) If your computer has not a particular font installed it will use another one. Both fonts appeared as different in my Thunderbird mail, but in Firefox, Trebuchet appeared as Times Roman, as do the comments.

I’ve thought several times of raising the issue with you of the typography on your site, but you put so much heroic effort into producing the content that it always struck me as churlish advice that would just make more work for you. Keep on with the climate stuff – where you are really making a difference – the typography doesn’t matter.

However, since you are thinking of messing around with the site, here are some thoughts.

– SERIF vs SANS-SERIF? Serif, particularly because you use italics frequently – this is *always* better in serif.

– Your current font is *not* ‘Trebuchet’, which is also a sans-serif font. Your current font is ‘Georgia’ with fallbacks to ‘Times New Roman’, ‘Times’ and then finally a generic serif font. A browser will go from specific to generic to find a font that is installed on the local machine.

– FONT-SIZE? Your font-size for run-on text (10px) is really much too small IMO. It is true that those in the know can zoom the page, but this is not ideal. If the layout is not designed to be zoomed – and yours isn’t – then this just produces a mess. On your site I need to actuate ctrl+ four times to get a font size that is easily readable for me. A website should really present its text at a readable size in the first place and not force users into using ctrl+ at every visit.

In contrast, the run-on text on a website I manage [e.g. http://figures-of-speech.com/2016/08/scrapbook.htm%5D has a final display size in absolute terms of 20px and a line height of 32 px. You might find this a bit extreme, but at least it’s readable for everyone on any machine without zooming. It’s not as though we need to save paper!

Since the person who created your main stylesheet has used absolute (px) values not relative values (e.g. em) this could be quite a job to unpick. You should really move over to the more modern relative values that enable the appearance to be scaled better by the browser, whether desktop, tablet or phone.

My advice is
1- Don’t do anything at the moment – stick with the climate stuff.
2- Find someone reliable who knows what they are doing and proceed step by step with incremental changes to get the site to a proper scaleable font at a decent size.
3- Keep up the good work! You are doing a really valuable job in this lunatic age!

Mike Jackson (below) is absolutely correct: you see the font that your browser chooses to show you. I can only repeat that the relevant stylesheet for this site contains the entry ‘Georgia’, ‘Times New Roman’, ‘Times’, serif.

The font size is hardwired at 10px, which means that on a high resolution screen like mine the font is tiny. NB: 10px is not 10 pica. 10 pica in a printed document would be reasonable.

I’m afraid I don’t know what a ‘font search’ is.

Another thing in respect of readability I forgot to mention is line spacing. Paul’s site is pretty good for this. It is important for the eye to be able to track the line easily = short lines and appropriate line spacing.

And yet another thing: Tahoma is not an easily readable font for various reasons I won’t go in to here. It’s ok for headings but not really suitable for run-on text. Verdana is better in this respect.

What appears on our screens is not necessarily what appears on Paul’s. On the iPad I have whatever Apple install on their stuff which is not quite the same as MS which is mostly industry standard.

On the laptop the font appears as Times New Roman while the new font appears as …. Tahoma!

Copied into Word both fonts come across as 12-point which ought to be big enough for all but the most visually-impaired of readers so I would guess that, like me, those who are having difficulty are using tablets. (Some recognisable typos in the comments, along with appropriate curses, would suggest the same! We all do it.)

I think the only cure has to be to use whatever facility is built in to expand the page. Changing to a font like Tahoma will not solve the problem.

Paul – thank you for this thread. I have now deleted 302 of the fonts on my desktop machine! A hangover from the days when I earned a precarious living doing layout and design work amongst other things though I am sad to see some of them go. ‘Meinradb’, anyone?

Is it a bit strange that posts about the end of the world might attract a dozen comments, but suggest a change of font and you get 70+? I bet this is just Paul’s way of increasing footfall on his site. As for the font, it’s your bat, your ball, you play it like you want, I don’t see enough difference to be bothered one way or the other.

I can’t tell much difference. But maybe if you bold the font it might be easier to read. Both fonts look light on my iPad. Thanks for the work you do. Know I can’t use you as a resource in one of my climate debate forums because the moderator for some reason can’t stand your logic.

The Tahoma look slightly bigger and darker with a slightly wider spacing between letters.
The Trebuchet look more compact but also lighter.
I find I often have to enlarge the page with Trebuchet, the Tahoma looks clearer without and very clear with magnification but there is not that much between them.
Some other sites are much worse, thankfully with Linux’s SeaMoney browser, I can over-ride the font settings to Droid Serif 12 for any or all sites.

For anyone struggling with the default font, more likely related to size (which is particularly small on high res displays) rather than font family, there is the option suggested earlier of magnifying the text (Cntl + or Cmd +).

There is also the option which may have been suggested earlier of switching the browser into Reader View. On Safari I just click the Reader icon in the left hand side of the website address/url.

For what it’s worth I’d be happy to volunteer some time to help on any updates/redesign.

I also second all those who suggested Paul deserves a medal for his efforts.

Hi Paul. Firstly can I say its brilliant and no doubt laborious work you are engaged in? FYI: I view your site on an ordinary mobile phone and notice no difference in the font. On a different topic can I suggest that when discussing ‘models’ or ‘climate models’ that at least one reference is made to computer models? While the tiny fraction of those who are interested in climate are fully aware of what models are surely it is essential to attract and enlighten those who may be less knowledgeable on the subject? My experience with those who have not investigated the hype around climate is that they are not aware of micro issues such as how the central plank of the so-called science of climate is computer modelling and if nebulous terms such as models are used that it will not capture their attention on occasions they may read about or listen to items on climate. Best regards and appreciation.

I don’t know how much “absolute power” WP let you have, but if your own CSS files are allowed you could satisfy (almost) everybody with a bit of care. Point your most competent code tweakers at http://www.csszengarden.com/ and you’ll see what I mean – it is quite astonishing.

Meanwhile, although my ageing eyes much prefer sans-serif these days, and although I agree that the default size is a bit small, I can’t say that the odd “control +” more or less is likely to discourage me from visiting a wonderfully informative site. Thanks a lot for it, Paul, and Keep Up The Good Work.

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